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The City of Vancouver is planning a new building bylaw that, for the first time in Canada, will require all new homes to be adaptable for seniors and people with disabilities.

The city wants all new single-family, townhouse and laneway homes to meet minimum accessibility standards.

Mandatory features could include wider doors, hallways and stairs, lever handles on all doors and plumbing fixtures, and electrical receptacles higher on walls.

The city is also doing an 18-month study of the feasibility of insisting new homes have at least one exterior doorway with direct access to the ground without stairs.

The changes, if adopted by council next week, would come into effect in March 2014.

They are part of a much wider revision of the city’s building bylaw that is supposed to reduce red tape, standardize unwritten building practices already used by builders, and set more ambitious goals for fire safety, energy conservation and sustainability.

Many amendments to Vancouver’s building bylaw in recent years have been aimed at multi-unit condominium, rental and commercial buildings. But in a report going to city council next week, chief building inspector Will Johnston said it’s time new single-family homes, townhouses, secondary suites and even stacked townhouses be made adaptable for seniors and those with mobility issues. The proposed changes would include construction methods that would allow for easy and less-costly retrofitting to allow people to age in their homes.

Johnston said Vancouver has often led the country in modernizing minimum building requirements. The changes have often been later adopted in the B.C. Building Code and the National Building Code.

“When I look at the changes that we are proposing and recommending council adopt, they are very simple, modest provisions that you can put into a home at time of construction that don’t, in my mind, have a significant impact on construction,” he said.

Johnston said his department consulted with the building industry, including architects, engineers and home builders and pulled back on some proposals.

He said, for example, that the city wanted even wider doorways and halls than being proposed, but scaled back the provisions on the advice of builders.

Johnston said the changes may look formidable, but they don’t involve retooling of the construction industry. He said, for example, the bylaw currently allows a minimum door width of 24 inches, but the construction industry mostly uses 32-inch doors.

Similarly, lever handles and faucets are already required in all new multi-residential construction.

The report to council says the proposed bylaw changes would add construction costs of anywhere between $660 a unit in high- and mid-rise buildings, to a high of $6,100 for single-family homes. For houses, the lion’s share of that cost comes from new demands for energy and water conservation. The cost of making homes more adaptable for seniors and disabled people is more modest, in the range of $480 for high- and mid-rise buildings, to $685 for single family homes.

But the homebuilding industry questions those estimates.

Bob de Wit, CEO of the Greater Vancouver Home Builders’ Association, which represents the region’s construction industry, said the new building bylaw would add significantly to the cost of a new home for homebuyers.

“For new single family construction, it’s between $5,000 and $10,000,” said de Wit. “That’s about one to two per cent of the cost of the house. It doesn’t sound like much, but at the margin it’s significant for sure.”

De Wit said he’s surprised the new bylaw is going ahead because the city consulted his group, which raised its concerns about extra cost for homebuyers.

“I’m surprised to see it go this far. My sense was that staff understood the added costs it would introduce.”

Making homes more accessible is understandable, he said, but there are other factors to consider.

“Right now prices are getting high enough that people are looking for any way to make it affordable to live in Vancouver, whether its adding a laneway home, or a basement suite or whatever. Adding 10 grand is another 10 grand that could crowd some people out of the market,” he said.

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